The development of multimedia technologies has enriched information presentation in software applications. Many image processing techniques have been developed for computer applications and especially for the Internet.
Taking an electronic commerce application as an example, existing electronic commerce systems generally support the function of attaching a picture to a product. A vendor publishing his product offerings over the network can upload pictures of the product in addition to textual descriptions. An image can exhibit a product more intuitively than mere text and, in most cases, the picture of a product can also be an important criterion based upon which a buyer confirms authenticity of information on the product.
For a majority of categories of products, a real photograph of a product should ideally be used as a picture of the product because the real photograph shows the appearance and property of the product intuitively. Some vendors, however, often upload irrelevant pictures such as an advertisement for the vendor, a sale record, a picture that includes a user manual, etc., which do not accurately reflect the properties of the product itself. Furthermore, such pictures hinder the efforts of data mining by the website owners and prevent effective categorization of products based on their appearances. Moreover, some website owners may wish to classify images unrelated to the actual products differently from images depicting products. Techniques for identifying and distinguishing different types of images are needed.